Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what information his Department holds on the number of people aged 16 to 24 who started employment in the hospitality sector in (a) October 2024, (b) April 2025 and (c) October 2025.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department does not hold this information. HMRC holds data on UK payrolled employment by age and industry and should be able to provide the information requested.
Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of abolishing the two-child benefit cap on children in poverty.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This government is committed to tackling child poverty and the Child Poverty Taskforce is developing an ambitious Child Poverty Strategy which we will publish in the autumn. We are considering all available levers, including considering social security reforms, to give every child the best start in life as part of our strategy.
The causes of child poverty are wide-ranging and deep-rooted, and so it is right that the Taskforce carefully considers and assesses the available levers as it develops this Strategy.
In the meantime, we are pressing ahead with action.
As a significant downpayment ahead of strategy publication, we have already taken substantive action across major drivers of child poverty through the Spending Review 2025. This includes an expansion of Free School Meals that will lift 100,000 children out of poverty by the end of the parliament, establishing a long-term Crisis and Resilience Fund supported by £1bn a year including Barnett impact, investing in local family support services, and extending the £3 bus fare cap.
Last month, we confirmed funding of £600m for the Holiday Activities and Food programme for the next three years, ensuring that children and young people can continue to benefit from enriching experiences and nutritious meals during the school holidays.
Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment she has made of the potential impact of the two-child benefit cap on levels of child poverty.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This government is committed to tackling child poverty and the Child Poverty Taskforce is developing an ambitious Child Poverty Strategy which we will publish in the autumn. We are considering all available levers, including considering social security reforms, to give every child the best start in life as part of our strategy.
The causes of child poverty are wide-ranging and deep-rooted, and so it is right that the Taskforce carefully considers and assesses the available levers as it develops this Strategy.
In the meantime, we are pressing ahead with action.
As a significant downpayment ahead of strategy publication, we have already taken substantive action across major drivers of child poverty through the Spending Review 2025. This includes an expansion of Free School Meals that will lift 100,000 children out of poverty by the end of the parliament, establishing a long-term Crisis and Resilience Fund supported by £1bn a year including Barnett impact, investing in local family support services, and extending the £3 bus fare cap.
Last month, we confirmed funding of £600m for the Holiday Activities and Food programme for the next three years, ensuring that children and young people can continue to benefit from enriching experiences and nutritious meals during the school holidays.
Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the remit of the child poverty taskforce includes examining the potential impact of the two-child benefit cap.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This government is committed to tackling child poverty and the Child Poverty Taskforce is developing an ambitious Child Poverty Strategy which we will publish in the autumn. We are considering all available levers, including considering social security reforms, to give every child the best start in life as part of our strategy.
The causes of child poverty are wide-ranging and deep-rooted, and so it is right that the Taskforce carefully considers and assesses the available levers as it develops this Strategy.
In the meantime, we are pressing ahead with action.
As a significant downpayment ahead of strategy publication, we have already taken substantive action across major drivers of child poverty through the Spending Review 2025. This includes an expansion of Free School Meals that will lift 100,000 children out of poverty by the end of the parliament, establishing a long-term Crisis and Resilience Fund supported by £1bn a year including Barnett impact, investing in local family support services, and extending the £3 bus fare cap.
Last month, we confirmed funding of £600m for the Holiday Activities and Food programme for the next three years, ensuring that children and young people can continue to benefit from enriching experiences and nutritious meals during the school holidays.
Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the report from the Child Poverty Action Group entitled 'Two-child limit statistics briefing', published on 10 July 2025, what steps she is taking to lift children out of poverty.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Tackling child poverty is at the heart of the Government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and improve the life chances of every child. The Child Poverty Taskforce is progressing work to publish the Child Poverty Strategy in autumn that will deliver fully funded measures to tackle the structural and root causes of child poverty.
The Taskforce will continue to explore all available levers to drive forward short and long-term action across government to reduce child poverty. The Strategy will tackle overall child poverty as well as going beyond that to focus on children in deepest poverty lacking essentials, and what is needed to give every child the best start in life.
As a significant downpayment ahead of Strategy publication, we have already taken substantive action across major drivers of child poverty through Spending Review 2025. This includes an expansion of Free School Meals that will lift 100,000 children out of poverty by the end of the parliament. We are also establishing a long-term Crisis and Resilience Fund supported by £1 billion a year (including Barnett impact), investing in local family support services, and extending the £3 bus fare cap. We also announced the biggest boost to social and affordable housing investment in a generation and £13.2 billion including Barnett impact across the Parliament for the Warm Homes Plan.
We’ve also committed to rolling out Best Start Family Hubs in every local authority by April 2026 and creating up to 1,000 hubs across the country by the end of 2028. Backed by £500m funding, this vital support will relieve pressure on parents and give half a million more children the very best start in life. And last month, we confirmed funding of £600m for the Holiday Activities and Food programme for the next three years, ensuring that children and young people can continue to benefit from enriching experiences and nutritious meals during the school holidays.
These commitments come on top of the existing action we have taken which includes expanding free breakfast clubs, capping the number of branded school uniform items children are expected to wear, increasing the national minimum wage for those on the lowest incomes and supporting 700,000 of the poorest families by introducing a Fair Repayment Rate on Universal Credit deductions.
Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make it her policy to include the PCS trade union in the co-production process for the Timms review of the Personal Independence Payment assessment.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Terms of Reference for this review were announced in a Written Ministerial Statement from the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on Monday 30 June, and you can find them here – Welfare Reform - Hansard - UK Parliament. They will be updated shortly.
We are committed to co-producing the review with disabled people, the organisations that represent them, clinicians, experts, Members of Parliament and other stakeholders, to ensure that a wide range of views and voices are heard. We will engage widely over the summer to design the process for the work of the review and consider how it can best be co-produced to ensure that expertise from a range of different perspectives is drawn upon.
We are currently planning what engagement will look like and will share more information in due course.
Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of legally-binding poverty reduction targets on the number of children living in poverty in Liverpool Riverside constituency.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
This Government is committed to tackling Child Poverty and the Child Poverty Taskforce is developing an ambitious child poverty strategy which we will publish in the autumn. The Taskforce will continue to explore all available levers to drive forward short and long-term action across government to reduce child poverty.
The Taskforce will be guided by the leading, internationally-recognised measure of poverty - Relative Poverty After Housing Costs (the proportion of families with below 60% of the median income, after deducting housing costs).
We will also measure the experience of children in the most severe and acute forms of poverty, which we are considering how best to measure as we develop the strategy.
These headline metrics will be supported by a range of other metrics as part of a monitoring framework to ensure the Strategy is on track to meet its aims.
The strategy is focused on metrics related to child poverty, but we are working closely with colleagues on complementary metrics across government. An example is the Plan for Change measure on the percentage of five-year-olds reaching a good level of development in the early years foundation stage assessment.
Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of legally-binding poverty reduction targets as a mechanism to deliver change in Liverpool Riverside constituency.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
This Government is committed to tackling Child Poverty and the Child Poverty Taskforce is developing an ambitious child poverty strategy which we will publish in the autumn. The Taskforce will continue to explore all available levers to drive forward short and long-term action across government to reduce child poverty.
The Taskforce will be guided by the leading, internationally-recognised measure of poverty - Relative Poverty After Housing Costs (the proportion of families with below 60% of the median income, after deducting housing costs).
We will also measure the experience of children in the most severe and acute forms of poverty, which we are considering how best to measure as we develop the strategy.
These headline metrics will be supported by a range of other metrics as part of a monitoring framework to ensure the Strategy is on track to meet its aims.
The strategy is focused on metrics related to child poverty, but we are working closely with colleagues on complementary metrics across government. An example is the Plan for Change measure on the percentage of five-year-olds reaching a good level of development in the early years foundation stage assessment.
Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of single parent lead carers with work requirements meet their Administrative Earnings Threshold.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The number of single parent lead carers on Universal Credit (UC) with work requirements who earn at or above the individual Administrative Earnings Threshold (AET) was 289,000 in March 2025. This is equal to 47% of the UC lead carer caseload who have work requirements.
Asked by: Kim Johnson (Labour - Liverpool Riverside)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what proportion of self-employed (a) single parent lead carers and (b) all lead carers meet their Minimum Income Floor.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
In March 2025, 32% of self-employed single parent lead carers on UC were earning at or above their Minimum Income Floor (MIF), compared to 31% of all self-employed lead carers on UC. This only includes claimants who are currently gainfully self-employed and have their MIF applied.